


All False Love and Affection

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Series: The Tangled verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Community: spn_30snapshots, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-02
Updated: 2011-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-23 08:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's pretty certain about how he feels about the archangel, but isn't sure that Gabriel isn't just messing him around. Maybe confronting him isn't the best idea, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All False Love and Affection

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'yearn' on my snapshots table.

  


 

 **All False Love and Affection**

 _It's all false love and affection  
You don't want me  
You just like the attention  
Yes it's all false love and affection  
You don't like me  
You just want the attention..._

– " _I'm Not Your Toy," La Roux_

If someone had told Sam six months ago that he would end up falling for the Trickster, Sam would have laughed in their faces.

Six months ago, though, Sam hadn't known that the Trickster was Gabriel in disguise, or had him popping in and out all the time to help Team Free Will with the apocalypse in his smug, smart-ass way.

Sure, Gabriel was annoying as hell, and his motivations inscrutable to those who weren't either insane or angels, but nonetheless he was often genuinely helpful, and every now and then Sam saw a glimpse of the archangel beneath the facade, great and knowing.

Sam had gotten used to Gabriel being around pretty quickly, and soon after that had actually grown attached to him.

Unfortunately, then his feelings had gotten _complicated,_ and it had gone downhill from there.

The problem was, Sam had no clue how Gabriel actually felt about _him_.

The archangel flirted with him incessantly, and left him little gifts like candy bars or new USB sticks. But while he could do nice things sometimes, he was just as capable of turning around and doing something callous or malicious. He bugged Sam all the time, on purpose, and said sneering things about him and Dean.

Sam _wanted_ to think that Gabriel genuinely liked him, he really did, but it seemed more likely that he was just a convenient source of entertainment, and the only reason Gabriel ever acted nice was for the attention.

It was like Gabriel had gotten bored of all his old toys, and saw Sam and Dean and Castiel – Sam in particular – as a bunch of shiny new playthings.

Sam had kept quiet, had just put up with it and tried to stifle his suspicion, but he couldn't take it any more.

So the next time Gabriel stopped by and started to flirt with him, Sam brought it up.

"Gabriel," Sam said. "We need to talk."

"Ooh, it's the serious _'we must discuss the implications of this'_ face," Gabriel said, mimicking Sam's expression and the hands on his hips.

"Can you just- can you just stop mocking me for _one_ minute?" Sam asked, trying to stay calm, although he could already feel his temper rising. It was always so easy for Gabriel to rile him; it was the casual, unthinking callousness and unkindness that Gabriel carried everywhere with him.

"Okay, I'll stop," Gabriel agreed, giving in far too easily. "What's up, Sam?"

Sam took a deep breath.

"What do you want from me, Gabriel?"

Gabriel titled his head sideways, and gave Sam a smirk.

"Oh, it's _that_ discussion, huh? I should have known you'd be a girl and want to _talk_ about it."

"Because, really, you're sending mixed messages, and I'd really like to know," Sam said abruptly, ignoring Gabriel's comment and keeping firm control over his ire.

"Ooh, I don't know, Sam." Gabriel made a show of peering at him closely. "What do _you_ want from me?"

He was still treating things like a giant game, the way he always did.

"I like you Gabriel," Sam said steadily, because the point of this was to get everything _out in the open_ and find out where they stood, even if it meant exposing himself and getting hurt. "I like you a lot. And I'd like it if we could have something permanent and _real_."

Gabriel rolled back onto his heels, raising a considering eyebrow.

"Well, that's a nice dream," he remarked.

Sam glared at him.

"Can't you _ever_ act like something matters, for once? Would it kill you to let someone close to you?" Sam demanded. "Everywhere you go, is there anyone you can actually depend on? Anyone who genuinely _likes_ you for who you are? You should give people a chance once in a while!"

The atmosphere in the room suddenly changed, to something charged and dangerous, and Sam had to restrain the impulse to take a step back.

The archangel glared at him.

There was a ring of gold around each iris, and the angry hum of electricity hung heavy in the air.

"Oh please," Gabriel sneered, with enough spite to shock Sam. He had suddenly stopped playing games and hiding, and Sam was seeing the seething, bitter being beneath. "Everyone turns their back on me in the end."

"Well maybe they wouldn't if you didn't push them away!" Sam burst out.

He had half a second to see Gabriel's eyes narrow.

The next moment Sam was slammed up against the wall hard enough to make his head ring, and blinked into eyes that burned an angry gold.

Gabriel's face was full of fury, his angelic nature leaking into his eyes, the hands twisted into Sam's collar shaking with utter rage.

It was terrifying.

"Shut up!" Gabriel snarled, his voice vibrating into impossible registers that hurt Sam's ears, a high-pitched inhuman whine that barely held back from doing him damage. "You don't know a damn thing! I've given _everything_ , again and again, and _every time_ it's thrown back in my face. I would have _died_ for my brothers, but they didn't give a fucking _shit_ when it came down to it. Did you know that archangels can physically manifest their wings? You know why I don't, Sam? Three thousand years ago Heaven was a battlefield and I was the Messenger, passing on news and orders. I got too close to Lucifer and got a sword through two of my wings for it. And Michael? He was so busy going _mano a mano_ with Lucifer that he just kicked me aside so that he could keep fighting while I bled Grace all over the fucking battlefield. No one stopped, Sam. No one came to help. I dragged myself to Raphael who slapped a band-aid on it and kicked me out on my ass.

" _That_ was when I got my first clue. But for the next two thousand years I stayed, I did my duty, and watched as my brothers tore each other apart. I tried to stop it, tried to make them see reason, and then one day Michael got impatient and _smote_ me for getting on his nerves. And you know what Raphael said to me? That that's what I _got_ for not just following orders. None of my brothers gave a flying fuck in _space_ what happened to me: hell, Lucifer and Michael had proved they were happy to slice me open if they were in the mood! I decided to get out before I could lose more than the use of a couple of wings. So go ahead Sam, tell me how much it's _my_ fault everyone walks away and leaves me to suffer."

Gabriel's voice was vitriolic and mocking, his golden eyes glowing with the sheer rage that that fuelled him for so long. Despite being absolutely terrified, Sam could suddenly see how the archangel, consumed by the turbulent emotions eating away at him, had become the twisted, cruelly mocking Trickster.

Gabriel's life had been marked out by callous indifference and countless betrayals, each one scoring deeper than the last.

Sam could almost see him, open and young and full of adoration for his older brothers, being flung aside or abused until the innocent, benevolent angel was replaced by something darker.

All of Gabriel's exasperating, incomprehensible behaviour suddenly made a horrible kind of sense, and oh God, it _hurt_ , like someone had just driven nails through Sam's heart.

"Gabriel," Sam choked out past the stranglehold on his collar, "please."

He wasn't sure what he was pleading for – certainly not himself – but Gabriel seemed to suddenly realise that he had Sam dangling half-throttled against the wall, and dropped him abruptly.

Gabriel straightened, a shadow of his usual insouciant demeanour falling over him, and looked at Sam with a cool contempt that nearly broke him.

"Gabriel, please," Sam said again, trying to find a way to articulate the frantic whirl of emotions inside him. "I'd never… I _swear_ … please. Gabriel, I'd _never_ do that to you. I mean it. It would kill me. You drive me insane and you hurt me a lot and Dean hates your guts, but I couldn't bear to treat you like that. I don't know how your brothers _could_."

Sam saw his utter sincerity and grief hit Gabriel like a slap in the face.

The archangel recoiled, eyes widening in shock, withdrawing from Sam as though almost afraid.

"Gabriel," Sam said carefully, "I can't promise never to hurt you, because I'm an idiot sometimes, but I'd do my best not to, and I would never use the way you feel about me against you."

Because Gabriel's brothers clearly had, using them to hold his loyalty and obedience, and as a weapon to casually flay him open when they wanted something.

"I know you could break me if you wanted, and there'd be nothing I could do to stop you, and it terrifies me. But whatever else you do, I trust you not to go that far."

"You shouldn't," Gabriel said in a small, cracked voice that oozed pain. "I'm not reliable, Sammy, and I'm not nice. I might have been once, but they turned me into something else."

"I know," Sam said gently. "The Trickster is as real as the archangel, isn't he?"

"More so, I think," Gabriel admitted, still in that small voice. "I can't help it, even if I want to. It's who I am."

He looked so lost, and small. Sam had never seen Gabriel look small before. The closest to it had been when Gabriel stood unsurely in the ring of holy fire back in the warehouse, while Dean ripped into him and he wondered if they were going to leave him trapped there forever.

God, no wonder he'd been afraid to stand up to his brothers.

"I'm not asking you to be anything else, okay?" Sam told him. "Just… that you let me see the archangel too sometimes, and trust me not to tear you open the way I trust you not to break me just because you can."

Gabriel just looked at him, and Sam thought that there was such a wealth of hurt there that Gabriel didn't know ho to deal with genuine caring when it was being offered to him.

"Okay," Gabriel said, vulnerability and fear and hope filling his eyes and voice.

Sam couldn't help the smile of relief and thankfulness that washed over his face at Gabriel's words.

Gabriel put out a hand uncertainly, like he wasn't sure whether he wanted to pull Sam close or hold him at a distance.

"I want to show you something," he said.

The next moment, the space behind him was filled with gargantuan wings that left Sam feeling dwarfed, enormous and powerful and gleaming with the same brilliant gold as Gabriel's eyes.

There were six of them, and four arched behind him with reassuring strength; but two of them hung awkwardly from Gabriel's back, feathers dull and askew and entire patches of them missing, showing scarred skin and the bare struts of broken flight feathers.

"Oh God," Sam breathed in horror. Without thinking he stretched out a hand, and then realised that Gabriel was watching him with all the fierce wariness of a hawk, and hastily drew it back.

"You can touch if you want," Gabriel said, still watching him.

It was another test, Sam thought, but it was a concession too, a chance for Sam to prove that he meant what he said.

As gently as he could, Sam brushed his fingers across one of the damaged wings, his hand shaking a little with the effort he was making to keep his touch as light as possible.

The feathers felt coarse and dry, the scar tissue toughened and taut.

Sam felt something roll down his cheek, and realised that he was crying.

He turned his head, to meet Gabriel's eyes.

They were back to their usual hazel, only a thin ring of gold remaining, and regarded him without blinking.

"I wish I could heal them," Sam told Gabriel, knowing that the very idea he could was ludicrous but feeling that it needed to be said, since Gabriel's brothers obviously hadn't felt the same way.

"Come here," Gabriel said quietly.

Sam did so, wiping his arm across his face to clear away some of the tears.

Gabriel pulled him in close and surveyed Sam's face, reaching up a hand to trace the tear tracks.

He sighed softly.

"I love you, Sam. So much more than you can comprehend." Four giant wings folded around them, holding Sam safe within their protection. "The thought of anything happening to you, or Lucifer getting his hands on you…" it makes me feel like I'd fight every one of my brothers rather than let that happen. The _need_ I feel to keep you safe burns sometimes until it feels like all of my Grace has been set alight. That's how much you mean to me."

Sam grabbed and clasped the hand trailing across his face.

"I'd rather Lucifer used me for a vessel than have anything hurt you," he said honestly. "I want you around for always, and I think the idea that you might leave, or see that I'm not worth it, probably scares me more than anything else right now."

Gabriel managed a shaky smile.

"I'm not planning on going anywhere, kiddo."

"I'm not either," Sam said resolutely. "Or, you know, turning my back on you, or anything."

Gabriel squeezed his hand tightly.

"Good to know."

"So… let's try and make this work?" Sam offered.

Gabriel nodded, his eyes searching Sam's face.

"Sounds like a plan."

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Usually I write milder, kinder Gabriels, more in line with the Gabriel we see in Hammer of the Gods – when you compare it to his earlier episodes, you can really see the archangel showing through. I decided to write a Gabriel who was more Trickster than archangel, but who still had the genuine emotion and hurt we saw at the end of Changing Channels. Because seriously, I love him, but obnoxious and callous don't even begin to cover it.
> 
> Also, just a random Gabriel musing: he claimed that he gave up the Messenger gig, but when you think about it, every Trick was as much about sending a message as it was amusing himself, so I think that his old self was closer to the surface than he liked to admit.


End file.
